Book Review: Illuminae – Sassy Characters + Insanely Cool Formatting

OH MY GOODNESS ILLUMINAE WAS SO GOOD!!!!!!! I loved it so much!! It was wonderful and amazing, and completely exceeded my expectations! And I had pretty high expectations.
It was spectacular, and just WOW! I’m going to fail atattempt to actually make some sense, and maybe be at least mildly coherent in my review… it may end up just being “I LOVED it! It was so good! Read it!” but I’ll try.

What I Loved!

The characters!

All of them are wonderful, and so well developed! I! Love! Them! So! Much!

Kady – Kady is great! She’s so snarky and sarcastic, and I love her so so so much! Tbh I think she’s my favourite. She just has some really great lines.

“This thing is locked down under the kind of privacy protections even Byron couldn’t crack. And if anyone reads it, I’m going to devote my life to finding a way to program every bathroom door on the Hypatia to refuse to recognize their ID. Actually, I think I could do that. BEWARE, SNOOPER.”

Ezra – I love Ezra almost as much as I love Kady, he’s great* awesome! He’s really caring and sweet at times, but he’s also very angry… those don’t really go together, but they do for him. Also he’s funny!

“Wowww. You’re really bad at this, chum. Like, if Bad was a sport, you could Bad for your planet.”

Very rude, but funny.

AIDEN – AIDEN is the artificial intelligence on one of the ships. I admit, I actually spent the majority of the book trying to figure out why on earth** everybody seems to love AIDEN. Because I hated him. And then somewhere in there it shifted, and by the end of the book I loved him… I’m not quite sure how that happened… but he’s sort of awesome, and has a very unique… I don’t know, thought process?

*Hmm, that’s the same word I used to describe Kady… I guess I need to come up with a new word.

**Or… in the universe maybe… because saying why on earth when they aren’t on earth seems silly…

The Suspense*

I had mostly high expectations for Illuminae, but this was one area I had somewhat low expectations. It’s told through interviews and files and chat messages, and the like, and I had no idea how they were going to pull of pacing, and making it suspenseful, and that sort of stuff.
Boy was I wrong. This was such an intense, suspenseful, exciting book! I absolutely couldn’t put it down! I was really surprised, so it made me very happy.

*That’s not at all the word I was looking for, but it will work…

The Formatting!!!!!!!

This book has such unique formatting! It is so wonderful! Like I said, it’s all told through chat messages, and emails, and things like that. It also has some really cool… I don’t know what to call it… cool formations made of words…

The parts like this are a tiny bit hard to read, but they really help set the tone, and they look so cool! So I don’t really care how easily I can read them. Who cares about readability? I love these parts!

This isn’t one of my favourite parts, I just think it looks cool, and it’s the sort of thing that’s in it somewhat often… so… PICTURE!*

*Also I finally had access to a halfway decent camera (My parents’ phone), so I was a bit excited, and took a bunch of pictures.

I don’t know why, but this rose makes me incredibly happy… it’s just sort of gorgeous, and really sweet, and it just makes me happy!

Is this impressive or what? I’m really, really impressed! Like, WOW! So detailed and spectacular! And just WOW!* WOW WOW WOW WOW! In case you somehow couldn’t tell, I’m impressed.

*I know I already said that, like three seconds ago, but just WOW!

What I Disliked

Um, basically nothing. My only complaint was that it was a bit confusing at times… I couldn’t keep the a couple of the minor characters straight, and for some reason I was always getting The Lincoln and The Alexander (Two of the spaceships… very different spaceships) confused. That’s it though.

Over All

ILLUMINAE WAS SO GOOD!!!!! YOU SHOULD READ IT!! JUST… GO READ IT! NOW! I also absolutely need Gemina. Right now. Although I probably need the break… BUT I DON’T WANT IT!!! Grrrrrr!

Have you read Illuminae? (If not, you should!) Who was you’re favourite character? Isn’t the formatting so cool?! (I really don’t know how you could argue with that…) Any sequels you are in desperate need of right now?

2 Comments

UGH yess Illuminae is LIFE. I’M SO PLEASED YOU LIKED IT. It’s so witty and there is just so much banter and so many hilarious quips and I can’t even with that SASS. AND THE FORMAT is awesome! It took me quite a while to actually get into the format but in the end I was hooked and finished the book in a day HAH